The Language Thread!

[bmot]

So... I was thinking, we should have a thread on languages, seeing how many different languaged people we got round here. Feel free to post anything that you can think of. Funny things, things that annoy you, anything!

[bmot]

And I'll kick it off, with this:


I have a Spanish friend... We talk about language quite often, and a lot of times she's trying to say 'vowels', she actually says 'bowels'... Very funny


(And of course, berbs, etc. etc.)

[kirk13]

Aw mate,just don't go there....I have an Ulster accent,which can be tricky for people,and if a get really annoyed,the accent thickens,and I start lapsing into Afrikaans

My personal favourite is 'eight'...the number of times I've had people not getting it,to the point I have to say,eight...you know the number between 7 and 9 

[Taxi Dad]

my wife doesn't understand me !!! but that's a whole nother story 

[Zed]

my wife doesn't understand me !!! but that's a whole nother story 

  mine knows me too well  i speak in a london/hybrid dorset language  most people down here dont understand me,although half the time i dont understand me 

[Mr. Whippy]

I moved to the Baltimore region from Oregon.  When I first got here, there were groups of Baltimoreans who I simply could not understand from the accent/dialect.

erl=oil
ooshin= ocean


Some of them, I can't even think how to phonetically spell them.  Googling Baltimorese :

This site is pretty close

[Nhoj]

I speak Rochesterian, a language where you speak quickly and pronounce everything with a nasal sound.

I also speak French.

[jerseydevil]

I speak Rochesterian, a language where you speak quickly and pronounce everything with a nasal sound.

Four years at school in Allegany County and I'm still not entirely sure I ever fully understood anyone up there....    Things like "slat ruff" for "slate roof" used to drive me nuts!  For the record, and I've said this before, I don't have an accent of any sort.  Alla youse guyz tawk funny, aight?    When I go visit relatives on Long Island, however, I do tend to come back pronouncing some words like they do for a week or so.  It's a bit annoying actually, since except for college, I haven't lived in NY since Halloween 1986, and I was 7 when I moved to Jersey.  Perhaps the easiest way to hear what I might sound a bit like would be to watch The Sopranos.....

[Nhoj]

I speak Rochesterian, a language where you speak quickly and pronounce everything with a nasal sound.

Four years at school in Allegany County and I'm still not entirely sure I ever fully understood anyone up there....    Things like "slat ruff" for "slate roof" used to drive me nuts!  For the record, and I've said this before, I don't have an accent of any sort.  Alla youse guyz tawk funny, aight?    When I go visit relatives on Long Island, however, I do tend to come back pronouncing some words like they do for a week or so.  It's a bit annoying actually, since except for college, I haven't lived in NY since Halloween 1986, and I was 7 when I moved to Jersey.  Perhaps the easiest way to hear what I might sound a bit like would be to watch The Sopranos.....

I think anyone would agree you talk with a much crazier accent than us!

[detron]

I grew up in North Carolina, and some of the crap I was taught was wrong, I just did not know it until I was in the Navy.

see-ment  =  Cement
helment    =  helmet

some time we put the M-phasis on the wrong SY-lable

[RamoN]

Lets see, my parents had the crazy idea that i should know english and many years later they were right. Now the funny story i had was that they started sending me at the age of 4 to english schools besides my regular school. At that time (almost 30 years ago) that was very rare. So in school whenever i learnt something, for example analizing a statement or the meaning of a complex word or phrase i always knew the answer in english but didnt know how to properly explained it in spanish  so i would raise my hand and then tell the teacher to wait so i could translate it in my head 

Know that im writing this i also remember earlier on when learining the abecedary at school i always had that "a,b,c,d,e,f and g..." song in english in my head before i learned the letters in spanish 

And on another story my grandmother was portuguese and she would sing portuguese songs all the time that i never fully understood 

[firiki]

There are some dialects around here as well. Some are about different accents mainly, that make me wonder WHY? do they talk like that though I know it's wrong to make fun of other people's accents. I don't have an accent though people I meet for the first time often trace me to various places I'm not from  . Other dialects use a different vocabulary along with an accent and I find those really intriguing. All is fair, in general.

One thing I still don't get: in northern Greece they readily use a wrong personal pronoun and the result is hilarious. A real-life example is when people there ask you to make them a coffee. What they are actually asking for is to be turned into coffee. This may also result in a menacing phrase like "I'll make some meatballs out of you" instead of "I'll make some meatballs for you". My wife is from there, fortunately she doesn't do this....thing much. However, when we're visiting I have to try hard not to laugh my heart out every single time this occurs -constantly, that is 

And a joke: Thessaloniki (second largest city in Greece, biggest in the north, named after Alexander the Great's sister) is the only place in Greece that is spelled with two "s" and is pronunced with two "l". They like making their "els" linger in Salonica 

[styx]

I'm trying to learn Dutch and I gotta say  that I have found one of my new favorite words - probeer. It's like regular beer but better, more professional not like the amateur ones

[Reinier]

I'm trying to learn Dutch and I gotta say  that I have found one of my new favorite words - probeer. It's like regular beer but better, more professional not like the amateur ones

I spilled my coffee, thanks.
Now I won't be able to read that word without thinking about professional beer.

[bmot]

I'm trying to learn Dutch and I gotta say  that I have found one of my new favorite words - probeer. It's like regular beer but better, more professional not like the amateur ones

 

I spilled my coffee, thanks.
Now I won't be able to read that word without thinking about professional beer.

 


 

[pfrsantos]

I'm trying to learn Dutch and I gotta say  that I have found one of my new favorite words - probeer. It's like regular beer but better, more professional not like the amateur ones

I spilled my coffee, thanks.
Now I won't be able to read that word without thinking about professional beer.

[kkokkolis]

I speak Greek ofcourse. Capital Athens Greek, nothing fancy.
Greece is small but we always had many dialects. The main dialects were Ionian, Dorian, Aeolian and many others. The most prominent was the Attic (a form of Ionian). Many ancient intellectuals wrote their books in Attic because it was used in Athens, the cultural capital of the world those days. Attic became the Koine,  a simplistic form that was the international language for centuries, standalone first and together with Latin afterwards (Latin for law and administration, Greek for everything else). The New Testament is written in Koine.
The reasons Greek had many dialects are many. Greece has thousands of islands (over 300 inhabited) and hundrends of mountains. There are many isolated areas here and there. Until the 1970s, many areas didn't have highways, telephones, television etc, so they weren't influenced by other dialects. Greeks were always cosmopolitans (Cypriots even more) with trade, shipping, travel, emigration, so they were influenced by many foreign languages. Greeks also colonised vast areas of Mediterranean sea, conquered  and then lived in most of the East world and had a strong political and culural impact on the North East (Slavic regions) and cultural in the West. So they were influenced also by those regions. We have many foreign words in our language and in the Ionian islands many of them are of Italian or French origin, while on the Aegean are of Turkish or Arabian origin and on the North of Slavic or Albanian origin. And all these people speak a lot of Greek words and the same goes for British or American or German people, although that influence came through science and art and it isn't a local phenomenon.
There is a very nice theatrical play called Babylonia, by Dimitris Byzantios, written in 1836, were many Greeks sleep overnight in a Hotel and although they speak the same language but with different pronounciation and idioms and they can't communicate with each other. It is very funny. But after all these years, with television, easier transport, Universities and such, the differences are now subtle between regions.
My grandparents were born in the Ottoman Empire. The regions that my father's parent lived became again Greek soil but my mother's parents had to emigrate from regions that are now Turkish (WWI and Balcan Wars you see, a lot of blood and population exchange then). When the kids (we) were around, my grandmother spoke Turkish with her daughters, so we couldn't understand what they said. I know some dirty Turkish words, because they avoided speaking those words in Greek!  As my grandparents grew older, they spoke less Greek and more Turkish, because they learned those languages in the reverse order. Turkish and Greek are very different, nothing in common, but there was a lot of words exchange between the two. The newer Turkish have a lot of French words also and I can understand most of them.
My wife is a teacher of linguistics and I like to talk with her about those matters.

[AimlessWanderer]

Bread! How can so much confusion come from something so simple?

Where I am we have breadcakes, some people call them bread rolls. In Barnsley, not too far away, they're called teacakes which is quite obviously wrong as teacakes have currants in. They get round this by calling those "currant teacakes"  Everywhere else calls them something else entirely, and depending where you are in the country, they could be called:
Breadcakes, teacakes, batches, barm cakes, baps, rolls, cobs, oven bottom cakes, muffins, nudgers or stotties ... and this is just in England 

Accents here are another major obstacle for many. Geordies, Scousers, Glaswegians and Brummies are the biggest culprits  but a strong accent from anywhere can be quite challenging, even for someone who only comes from 50 miles away. Dialect is a lot easier to negotiate around if you can decipher the rest of the words they're using 

Yorkshire (here) can be confusing for some too:

English: "It is not in the tin"
Yorkshire pronunciation: It isn't = "t'in't", in the = "in t'", tin = "tin"
Just sounds like: "Tin Tin Tin"

Makes perfect sense to me 

[pfrsantos]

Bread! How can so much confusion come from something so simple?

Where I am we have breadcakes, some people call them bread rolls. In Barnsley, not too far away, they're called teacakes which is quite obviously wrong as teacakes have currants in. They get round this by calling those "currant teacakes"  Everywhere else calls them something else entirely, and depending where you are in the country, they could be called:
Breadcakes, teacakes, batches, barm cakes, baps, rolls, cobs, oven bottom cakes, muffins, nudgers or stotties ... and this is just in England 

Accents here are another major obstacle for many. Geordies, Scousers, Glaswegians and Brummies are the biggest culprits  but a strong accent from anywhere can be quite challenging, even for someone who only comes from 50 miles away. Dialect is a lot easier to negotiate around if you can decipher the rest of the words they're using 

Yorkshire (here) can be confusing for some too:

English: "It is not in the tin"
Yorkshire pronunciation: It isn't = "t'in't", in the = "in t'", tin = "tin"
Just sounds like: "Tin Tin Tin"

Makes perfect sense to me 

Sorry, old chap. The correct pronunciation is: "'t'int in t'tin".

Carry on, as you were! Chop-chop and all that...

[pfrsantos]

We got some oddities, too. In the north, the folks in some regions pronounce "B" as "V" and vice-versa. You'd think that they might have some problem with saying one of the letters but it's not that. They just swap them.
In other places they add or subtract a letter from a word:
"Coffe and milk" is "Café com leite". In some places, it becames "Caféi com lete".

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Sorry, old chap. The correct pronunciation is: "'t'int in t'tin".

Carry on, as you were! Chop-chop and all that...

That's what I said  How come are you so familiar with it anyway?

Jokes for people who understand Yorkshire ..... those unfamiliar with the accent may miss the gags here 

Why don't people in Barnsley have a meal until just after 7:30?
Cos it's summat to eight

A Barnsley lad suffering with piles goes to the chemist and asks "Nar den, got any arse cream"
Assistant replies, "Cornetto or Magnum?"

I don't know why everyone is suddenly talking about twerking, we've been doing it for years ... f' t'money t'pay t'bills

Clubbers in Yorkshire have taken to using dental syringes to inject liquid Ecstasy directly into their mouths.  This dangerous process is known as 'E by gum'

Barnsley man goes to the vet:
 Man: "Can tha stop me cat wazzin' on t'furniture?"
 Vet: "Is it a tom?"
 Man: "Nahow, it's 'ere in t'basket"

[kkokkolis]

Nice. I'm waiting to here something from the ol' American South.


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

[pfrsantos]

Nice. I'm waiting to here something from the ol' American South.


Ἄφοβον ὁ θεός, ἀνύποπτον ὁ θάνατος· καὶ τ’ ἀγαθὸν μὲν εὔκτητον, τὸ δὲ δεινὸν εὐκαρτέρητον.
Φιλόδημος Γαδαρεύς

Now, y'all just sit tight and don't you go worry'n yo' pretty little heads with i', ya hear?

[Cupboard]

Barnsley man goes to the vet:
 Man: "Can tha stop me cat wazzin' on t'furniture?"
 Vet: "Is it a tom?"
 Man: "Nahow, it's 'ere in t'basket"

 
Especially that last one.

I've now lived in Norfolk nearly two years and I still struggle with some things despite having been quite used to a Suffolk accent - they're nearby counties.

It's bruk = it's broken
Up the chimberly = up the chimney
Load of tut = load of smurf

They do love winding me up about the language

[Whoey]

When I initially moved to the UK to work for a radio station I had the joy of answering the request line a few times. A couple evenings of that was enough for me. As a Canadian who natively speaks English, answering the phone there was truly a horrifying experience...

[AlephZero]

Oh don't even get me started about broken english online... nothing to do with the examples you've given guys...

I have met native english speakers that I have had real trouble understanding (in typed english)... go figure

[AimlessWanderer]

When I initially moved to the UK to work for a radio station I had the joy of answering the request line a few times. A couple evenings of that was enough for me. As a Canadian who natively speaks English, answering the phone there was truly a horrifying experience...

  Which accent were you abused by?

[Whoey]

Swansea comes to mind... so Welsh... 

[Taxi Dad]

NOBODY UNDERSTANDS THE WELSH !
(even when they talk 'English'!  )

[Whoey]

yup, that was pretty much it, and a scot that would call up bladdered... fun times...